- [Angela] My name is Angela Brown and my business is Brown Angel Skin & Hair, a plant-based, clean beauty product line that features vintage Black actresses on the labels.

My business is a micro-business and I was concerned about taking that risk to get this new concept out.

The Comcast Rise grant has given me an opportunity to take that risk and scale up my business and take it to the next level.

I feel that my business helps increase representation for Black women on the shelf.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Midterm elections are finally here.

What's really at stake at November ballot?

- Abortion has been a winning issue for Democrats so far.

Whether that it will be as prominent voters' minds come November, I think is the question.

- I think people are concerned about crime or the perception of rise in crime.

I hear that all the time.

- [Announcer] Then we take a deep dive into the quest for disability rights in the workplace.

- Employers are beginning to really understand how empowering it is to have a diverse workforce that includes people with disabilities because it represents the full breadth of society.

- [Announcer] This month on "Civic Cocktail."

- Here we are in the middle of some of the most politically tumultuous years of our lifetimes, and next month, it's the midterms, when we Washington voters have some big choices to make.

How are major national issues like abortion and the economy driving campaigns across the state?

What local issues will show up big on the ballot?

And what does it all mean for the broader political dynamics in our country?

Are Washington's 2022 midterms a referendum on Democrats in power, or thanks to tense confrontations about the health of our elections and democracy, yet another election about Trump?

Here to explore these and many other questions is our panel of local political journalists who have analyzed these issues inside and out.

Please welcome Carlton Winfrey, political editor at the Seattle Times, Melissa Santos, reporter at AXIOS, and Joe O'Sullivan, state political reporter at Crosscut.

So, Joe, you and Crosscut have been tracking the issues that are animating and motivating voters this election.

What are they and where are they showing up?

- When we started the year, we do our Crosscut-Elway Poll.

When we started the year, we thought, well, the economy is on people's minds.

Inflation, gas prices, a lot of different things.

And of course, since then, the spring, the United States Supreme Court rolled back our protections for abortion.

So in our Crosscut-Elway Poll in mid-September of likely voters, the economy showed up as sort of the number one thing.

About 22% of all respondents said that, but abortion was pretty close at 16%.

The other interesting thing is something that wasn't an issue that came up.

Voters were saying, respondents were saying that party ideology and affiliation was an increasing factor for them.

So they were answering the survey like, pro-Democrat, anti-Democrat, not woke, anti-Trump.

And our pollster, Stewart Elway, said, well, you know, that's happened before in the past, but it's rising up more and more and becoming a stronger factor for people voting.

- So, Carlin, what are you seeing at the Times?

Lining up here?

Anything else showing up?

- We had a similar poll as well looking at the issue of abortion.

And our numbers were a little bit higher 'cause one of our questions went directly to women voters in Washington and 35% said that that was the number one issue that they will take to the poll with them.

- [M nica] 35% of women in Washington.

- Of women said that.

- Yeah.

- And second behind that was inflation.

And those numbers sort of reversed when it came to male voters and inflation was number one, but abortion and the issues surrounding abortion and the right to an abortion was second.

So those two issues are at the top of list of issues that voters are taking to the polls with them.

- I think what's notable from that Crosscut-Elway Poll is really the partisan split on those issues was really remarkable.

When you look at the cross tabs, get all nerdy about the poll, the Republicans, when just asked this open-ended question about legislative races, what are you considering as issues when you're voting for the state legislature?

I've covered that poll at Crosscut and previous jobs and I've never quite seen some of what I saw here, but abortion was only 4% of Republicans said that that was a priority for them, but it was 27% of Democrats.

And also we saw in economic issues, big split there where it was some, like a third of Republicans said some economic issue versus only 11% of Democrats.

So that's really a partisan split on those issues.

It's like people care about them across the board, I think, but you really see the difference when you start looking at biparty ID.

- And with economy, it's a little surprising.

Economy is, I mean, conventionally a fairly spread-out sort of issue.

- Sure.

Yeah, I think that, but we're seeing that in the messaging when we talk more about these campaigns in particular and you can see how each party's leading into those issues.

- Yeah.

So let's jump right into the economy and inflation.

It is near the top of the list, as we said, and not surprising when cost of living increases are near their highest levels in 40 years.

So let's start with the Senate race.

That's the big one.

What should we understand about the difference between Patty Murray, the Democratic incumbent, and Tiffany Smiley, her Republican challenger, on this issue on the economy?

- I think Washington voters, particularly Seattle voters, are educated voters.

And I don't know if they're making a connection between what was expensive before and what's expensive now versus other parts of the country where inflation has really gone up and it's a big difference.

This is not a cheap place to live.

- [M nica] Yeah.

- And so although have seen gas prices are still a little bit elevated, but on that particular, with those two candidates with the Senate race, I think people are looking at, well, what would you do?

You know, how would you address inflation?

Like if Tiffany Smiley is elected, then how would you control inflation as an individual senator?

Is that possible?

And for Senator Murray, it's like, well, what did you do to cause inflation, if one person can do that?

And what do you plan on doing in the next six years to address it?

- So how are the campaigns handling this differently then?

- So I think sort of going back to the polling question about how everybody perceives things so differently when we talk about the economy, you know, with low unemployment, but prices are rising a lot.

You've had this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and the government response, you had aid packages under Trump, you had an even bigger aid package under President Biden that pushed a lot of money through the government.

Tiffany Smiley says the government's spending too much money that's racking up debt, that's driving up prices, it's overheating the economy.

And Patty Murray says, you know what?

This helped us save a lot of jobs.

This helped us keep governments functioning during the pandemic and helped fund emergency responders and stuff.

And so it's a very strange, complicated issue to sort of boil down into 30-second sound bites or even less than that, which is what you often see on the campaign.

- And how is that resonating with voters?

How are these messages being received?

- I think it's hard to tell.

- It's hard to tell.

Patty Murray, in our latest poll, I think she was up 50%.

Tiffany Smiley was about 37%, with 12% undecided.

You always want to be at 50% or above, obviously if you're the incumbent.

But it was a little lower than some previous Patty Murray surveys earlier in the year and earlier in her.

She's running for I believe her sixth term now.

So everybody tries to get her.

Nobody's done it yet.

And I don't know if Tiffany Smiley can, but maybe.

Who knows?

- So staying with this race for a minute, what other differences should we note between Smiley and Murray and what they're spotlighting in their campaigns beyond the economy and inflation?

- I don't know about you all, but I just see Patty Murray really hammering abortion really hard.

She's a huge leader on abortion rights issues and she's really been pushing that.

And in every possible turn, I've seen her campaign hammering Tiffany Smiley for Smiley's stances on abortion, supporting the Texas abortion ban, and then kind of also attacking her for waffling on the issue maybe since the primary.

That's what the accusation is.

And Smiley's been walking this line, saying I don't support a nationwide abortion ban, but I support letting the states do it.

And Patty Murray's campaign is like, well, that's basically just letting abortion be banned everywhere and you like that Texas abortion ban, so we're gonna just keep saying that through the whole campaign.

And I think that in Washington, I think that is likely effective given our voters really have been supportive of abortion rights, voting for it at the polls at multiple times and putting it in law.

So I think that they think that's a winning strategy and that's one thing they're really focusing on in that race.

- Yeah.

Are they right, given that we know that Washington women voters are particularly focused on abortion?

- When this happened in June, when the Supreme Court came down in June, Patty Murray's office came out immediately, if not that day, maybe the next day, like immediately with a statement.

And not sure if Tiffany Smiley's campaign did the same, but there was a nationwide Republican response to this.

Like, okay, now we're gonna go for a nationwide ban on it.

And until Kansas, the state of Kansas had their election, so the Republican Party started backtracking a little bit on that issue.

And so what we're seeing now from Tiffany Smiley is a reflection of that.

You cannot say you completely want to do a nationwide ban on abortion.

You cannot say abortion for incest, rape, and anything.

You cannot say that as a Republican.

You may believe it, but you can't say it.

- Nationwide concerns are so present in our elections that pollster Stewart Elway, who directs the Crosscut-Elway Poll, suggested that we flip the famous Tip O'Neil quip and say that all politics is national.

But given that, what are the local, at-home issues and what are their impacts here showing up in this race?

- I think people are concerned about crime or the perception of arising crime.

I hear that all the time.

We hear that in letters to the paper, callers.

People call the paper talking about that.

And just people you meet on the street, people have a perception that crime is, especially violent crime is out of control.

And there's a fear I think that people have of being murdered.

The chance of somebody being murdered, really, it's pretty low.

- And the police chief has said that violent crime is at something like a 25-year high, I think.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- Right.

And so I think, and you see a lot of commercials and on TV now sponsored by a lot of PACs that emphasize violence and showing images of people being robbed and mugged and like stabbed.

It's like really over the top kind of commercials and that feeds on people's fear that something's gonna happen to them.

And so whoever's in office, it's like, you're responsible for this, whether you're Democrat or Republican.

So you're responsible for this fear I have.

And I think people may respond to that in November.

- Yeah.

What would you all add to that, that crime coming up in the ballot?

- Crime is on people's minds and it's in the Senate race and other federal races, but you know, a lot of the stuff, a lot of our policing laws, they happen at the legislature and things like that.

So you're seeing it be discussed in the Senate race, but I think the legislative race is where you're also seeing it discussed.

I mean, that's where I think lawmakers can make more sort of sweeping changes one way or the other to actually impact that.

- Yeah, I mean, speaking of legislative races, I know we're talking about the US Senate races, but we are seeing those national issues reflected in all these local races as well.

But what interestingly with crime I thought it was very interesting, I think Republicans, at least in these local races, they changed their tact a little bit after the primary.

They kind of didn't do that well in the primary.

A lot of that was attributed to the abortion ruling, which was pretty fresh in folks' mind at that point.

But they also, actually, the House Republican leader in our State House said, we found that we thought people would be really, really concerned about violent crime at the local level.

They're more concerned about property crime.

They're more concerned about their car getting stolen.

So they're really leaning into that a little bit more and not so much now, they've sort of switched their strategy a little.

And I found that kind of interesting that they're talking more about sort of the petty crime a little bit more than the serious violent crime, 'cause we do have a rise in violent crime, but people weren't as concerned about that for some reason is what they were finding on the Republican side with their polling.

- Senator Murray and Representative Kim Schrier, who's running for reelection in the 8th Congressional District, they've both been clear they would oppose any national abortion ban.

What do we know about their Republican challengers?

- Larkin's pretty strong on pro-life.

Schrier is pretty pro.

I mean, it's a pretty cut and dry issue.

If that's your motivating issue in the 8th District, you're not gonna have too much time trying to figure that out.

Tiffany Smiley has to, again, make the argument that it should just be left up to the states.

And that was an argument that might have, it might still do well, but it probably did well three years ago when nobody was thinking too much about abortion and nobody was assuming Roe v Wade would be rolled back.

Does that argument fly now that people are taking a sort of a much more serious, not as abstract a look at abortion?

- Regarding Smiley, to be clear, she has said she's 100% pro-life.

Like she personally opposes abortion.

And it's just a matter of what sort of, how she's now saying that will be reflected in policy.

But she's indicated that she does support, she had said in previous interviews earlier in the campaign that she liked the Texas abortion ban.

Then again, that's why Patty Murray keeps focusing on that.

And that's certainly out of line with what we have here as our law in Washington State.

And so she's definitely very, very pro-life.

I mean, I think there's a huge contrast there between the candidates.

It's not just semantic.

It's a big contrast.

- So the issue would be whether voters will believe that she does not in favor of a national ban.

- I mean, I don't know if voter, I mean, I talked to someone who, oh, yeah, it was a professor at Western Washington University, Todd Donovan, who was saying he's not even sure that voters will differentiate there.

Like yes, they probably should because if you're in Congress, that's what you do.

You do national policy.

But it's possible that voters will just say, Texas abortion ban, man, that's not gonna work for me.

And not really explore it with that nuance.

And I wonder if that's true.

I'm not sure.

I think voters are pretty smart.

I think people in this room are probably pretty smart and sort through that stuff.

But also I think there's some question since given the Republican record on what they've said about abortion versus what sort of happened with it over time.

- And I think in the back of their minds is that the Republicans could take the Senate and if that happens, they could take the House and a national ban is a possibility, although Biden is still president.

- Yeah.

And actually, I did push back.

I asked Patty Murray's campaign about this I think last week 'cause they had an ad that to me, when I read it, when I just watched it, it's like, oh, you just said Tiffany Smiley has supported a national abortion ban.

Where do you get that?

When I looked and pulled apart the words, they didn't quite say that.

They were saying she supported politicians who would want to enact.

So that was that idea that Mitch McConnell would take the Senate and then they would go for it.

So they kind of like are parsing their words there and you know, maybe there's no difference.

That's kind of what they're betting on with the voters.

- Yeah.

There's an interesting flip side too.

Senator Murray for a long time was an opponent of getting rid of the filibuster in the Senate.

The theory that everybody wants to get rid of the filibuster to get things done, but if you're in the minority and it's gone, things can't change your way.

But she has said she is willing to get rid of the filibuster on just one or two narrow issues and codifying Roe into law is one of them.

- Oh, how about that?

Yeah.

I mean, so high stakes that people are going to new measures.

So let's turn to the 3rd Congressional District.

This is where Republican candidate Joe Kent is running against Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and that's talked about as a referendum on Trump.

Why is that?

- Well, Joe Kent has been a Trump supporter for many years.

He's been endorsed by President Trump.

He worked on President Trump's 2020 campaign doing outreach for military families.

He's a former special forces combat veteran who deployed 11 times overseas and sort of, he sort of exists partly within that sort of Trump's sphere.

He goes on Steve Bannon's shows and stuff and he's a pretty unapologetic Trump, America first candidate and he's not shy about it.

- Also promise to, if elected, move toward impeaching President Biden.

So for those people who voters who may not be satisfied with Joe Biden, that may be something that will appeal to them.

- And I think that that'll, and that race even more than some of the other ones, the sort of election fraud issue really is a really big contrast between the candidates.

And I think that that, how well Joe Kent does kind of pushing that sort of saying, we should impeach Joe Biden, and also sort of saying that Trump was robbed at the election.

I mean, he has repeated the sort of narrative from Trump that the election was rigged in 2020.

How that plays will be sort of a test there.

But some of it was a test that already happened in the primary when Jaime Herrera Beutler, the sort of more moderate Republican, got knocked out.

I mean, it was definitely a referendum on Trump then because Jaime Herrera Beutler voted for impeaching Trump and she was only one of 10 Republicans nationwide to do so and she lost.

So I'm kind of not sure how much this fall election, I mean, has Trump spokes already won?

I don't know.

I mean, we'll have to see how the Democrat fares there.

It does lean Republican, the district.

So some of the referendums happened already.

- We've also had a story in today's Seattle Times about several GOP residents, officials in that area, in that district supporting Gluesenkamp Perez.

- And what were their reasons?

- 'Cause they didn't like Joe Kent.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And a lot of things that he said, they thought he was too extreme, too over the top, should not still denying the election two years later, and that he should move on.

And these were Republicans and not only just in voicing their opinion, but they're also helping raise money for Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

- Yeah, that was an interesting story.

Joe had an interesting story today or yesterday about, the thing I wonder about is have Democrats given up on that race a little?

Because the DCCC, the Democratic Campaign Committee, and this is your story.

I'm reciting (indistinct).

But they're not really sending money to support Gluesenkamp Perez in the way that you might think, in a race that isn't, it's not that far.

I mean, it doesn't lean so far R that it's not winnable necessarily, at least not according to the AG.

I should let you talk about your story.

That's a really interesting story to me.

- You're doing a good job.

- You know what?

You have our state attorney general that Joe apparently tracked down and I was like, man, that's a good get, to say this is a winnable district.

Why isn't the Democratic party sending more money?

And what was the... - Yeah, why?

- Why does that happen?

- The Washington 3rd Congressional District, interesting chunk of the state, Southwest Washington.

You've got the city of Vancouver.

You've got sort of the old wine, shellfish, and timber operations.

Used to have a lot of white working class Democrats that just in the last six to 10 years have slowly started to move over the Republican party side.

But when you look at the opinions of President Trump down there, Jaime Herrera Beutler won her 2020 election by 17 points against a Democratic challenger.

Donald Trump won the district by four points in 2020.

So you can see that there's less enthusiasm down there for Trump among the electorate.

So Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, if Democrats had sort of like a dream candidate for a conservative rural district, she works and owns an auto shop with her husband.

She lives in rural Skamania County.

They built their house together by themselves.

She is positioning herself sort of as a pragmatist and-- - [Carlton] Supports gun rights.

- Supports gun rights.

She did a caucus for Bernie Sanders back in 2016.

She says that's 'cause, hey, I just, she's 34 years old.

She said, I don't wanna spend my whole life living under the Bush dynasty and the Clinton dynasty.

Whether she has the means to sort of get her message out is one of the questions.

Democrats in Washington State are pushing for her.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson was down there campaigning for her.

The state party chair, Tina Podlodowski, has been down there for her.

The governor, Governor Inslee, sent out a fundraising pitch for her.

But the National Democratic Party is not getting involved at this point there.

- And why do you think that is?

- Well, they're playing defense all across the country.

The Democrats control the US House by five seats and they've gotta defend 20 or 30 seats.

This race popped up sort of late on the calendar, right?

We have a August primary.

I think people thought Jaime Herrera Beutler, the Republican, would get through.

She didn't.

And so she might be down on her own now and there with no national help.

- So let's turn to questions around elections and the Secretary of State race.

So this race has the most direct impact on our election process.

Steve Hobbs is up for reelection, he was appointed, but it's a tight race with his challenger Julie Anderson.

So what's at stake here?

What's making this one complicated?

- This is a very complicated one.

- Right?

- Because she's an independent and we don't know.

What do we do with an independent?

- It's such a partisan time.

What does this mean?

- So I think that's sort of complicated a little bit.

And he was an appointed Secretary of State and people were still trying to figure out, what is he gonna do as a Secretary of State?

And also, which goes on to, sort of segues to election integrity.

I know you're gonna get there, but people are concerned about that.

And if you are the Secretary of State, this is a big job and we are all concerned about, is my vote gonna count?

And so that's a race that I think people should really look closely at and the backgrounds of both candidates.

- This is a great example of, you were talking about sort of local issues.

Think about local political dynamics.

Washington State, voters here have elected Republicans to that office ever since 1964, I believe.

Moderate, very sort of mild manner Republicans who pioneered vote by Whale in Washington State, I mean, that was Republican Secretaries of State and county auditors that were putting that in place over the years.

And so Kim Wyman's departure sort of really ended an era, and to Carlton's point, really sort of things got shook up here because you had a lot of Republican candidates in the August primary, so many that it diluted the vote.

So Democrat Steve Hobbs gets through and independent Julie Anderson gets through and voters aren't used to sort of seeing that sort of mix, especially for an office that they probably don't think about too often, even though it does some important things.

- So are Republicans thinking about putting their support behind Julie Anderson or is that not happening?

- I'm really into this race.

Think it's super fascinating.

- [M nica] I think it's so interesting.

- I tell all these stories about it.

Yeah, I mean, Julie Anderson has been getting some Republican support and that's actually caused the Democratic party to really attack her.

I had a story about this just today that the Democratic party chair is attacking Julie Anderson as being like bad for voting access, which actually isn't really true.

I mean, it just flat out isn't true.

I went through like 10 years of hearings to see what bills she testified on and stuff and she's big on ballot drop boxes, big on vote by mail, big on having a lot of access to voting.

So that's not really true.

But the Democrats are in this position of being like, well, Republicans, there's been some prominent Republicans who've endorsed her and that's bad.

So we have to go after her for this and that and say that she's just a shadow Republican, and she's really not.

She's actually, she would hate me for saying this, but she's really more of a Democrat.

She historically has been a Democrat, although for the last 15 years, she has been nonpartisan, and she doesn't even like the term independent.

She's nonpartisan.

She's not like a Republican who's hiding behind a label independent.

She's nonpartisan.

So that's just created a really weird, really weird dynamic.

Actually, I could talk about this story forever, but one thing I'll say is that you actually have Democrats kind of mobilizing behind Steve Hobbs, who kind of blocked a lot of their priorities when he was a state senator and wasn't super popular among progressive Democrats.

But now they're saying, this guy, you have to support this guy, absolutely this guy, and this is just, you have to ignore this nonpartisan candidate.

And it's gotten kind of weird.

It's just like a really weird race.

- Well, from one weird thing to another that was already brought up, which is how partisan ideology seems to be playing a huge role.

You mentioned the overlap on issues, on some big issues is very small, if there at all.

So what's going on?

Why are we seeing so much more of a partisan identifier showing up and then getting people to almost have two different elections, as I think columnist Danny West and Stuart Elway have been writing about?

- I do think that social media has a big role.

You just see the stuff.

You see that echo chamber is real.

But I think that there is the election fraud issue and Democrats being like, oh my God, every Republican's an election denier.

We cannot have any of those.

As it has fueled that a little bit, I think that there's some, that's some of it just saying, I'm just gonna vote for Democrats.

I can't know.

I can't know if Republicans are, is this a Republican who thinks that we need to go storm the US capital or not?

And that's unfair.

I think that's an unfair blanket generalization about Republicans.

But you have people feeling that way and saying more than I have seen before, I feel like, and you saw that in the Elway Poll, just saying it matters that they're Republican, it matters if they're a Democrat, and I think part of it is the election issue.

- And a lot of it is January 6th was such a huge deal.

That was a big deal for that to happen, the US capital be attacked internally, I mean, not by a foreign country, but by Americans.

That's huge.

And it's still being played out.

And tomorrow, I think there's a hearing tomorrow.

So we are seeing hearings popping up every month, every month.

It's on the news all the time, developments on, records from this and CIA and Secret Service and all of this is weighing on people that January 6th is replaying almost in our minds daily.

And when it comes to that, are you election denier?

Then, hey, did you support any elected official that voted against certifying Biden?

Oh, well, you're done.

So, January 6th, we're still living with it.

- So is this leading some people who otherwise would say that they care about the economy to say, "Oh, maybe I don't care about the economy that much.

That's a Republican thing."

I mean, has it gotten to that point, Joe?

- It's certainly been going that way for a while.

Yeah.

And so I wouldn't be too surprised.

I was at a Joe Kent town hall a few weeks ago in Kelso and Cowlitz County.

His biggest pause line of the night to about 60 people in Republican county headquarters was, "We're gonna impeach Biden."

I mean, that was the thing.

And talking about getting to the bottom of what supposedly happened in the election and going after people in the Biden administration with investigations.

- What would be interesting with that, Joe, is Joe Biden has been in the Senate for decades and he's got friends still there.

And would that personal relationship with the Republican party supersede those personal relationships and they would go along with this?

Or they remember good old Joe, I'm not gonna do this, and we're gonna stop it right there.

- Oh my gosh.

Yep.

Wow.

Well, thank you for, there's just a lot to cover and I think we just got started, but luckily we have all kinds of great questions from our audience, so we're gonna jump right in.

So from Mort, how effective have the two parties been in selling their cases?

Seeing the answers on your faces.

- I mean, I do think Republicans, I focus a lot on legislative races and I think you can see locally what's happening a little bit better, but Republicans expected to do better in this primary we had in August.

They expected to do better and they did not.

And they, like I said earlier, they had to change tactics a little bit to some respect.

So I think that abortion has been a winning issue for Democrats so far.

Whether that it will be as prominent in voters' minds come November, I think is the question that maybe Stuart Elway, when I talked to him, your pollster had, maybe.

It's a huge issue for folks, but will it be as fresh?

Will it have the same impact in the general or was the impact already seen in the primary?

Has everyone who was already motivated to vote showed up, did their vote, and now it's not gonna be reflected as much?

So there's been an impact for sure.

- And I think to sort of maybe turn the question back to the way that you phrased it, if people aren't living in different realities, political realities, how much does the message matter anymore as long as it's this side versus this side?

And I don't know.

- Well, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you to our panel, Melissa Santos from AXIOS, Carlton Winfrey of the Seattle Times, and Joseph O'Sullivan, Joe from Crosscut for helping us make some sense of these midterms.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

We're gonna take a quick break and then we will be back soon for the second part of our program.

Thanks, everyone.

(upbeat music) Welcome back to "Civic Cocktail."

We've talked a lot in recent years about how differences in race and gender can influence how we're treated in the workplace and what we can do to make sure everyone is given a fair and equal chance to contribute and succeed.

One set of differences we don't often talk about are the ones faced by people with disabilities.

It's National Disability Employment Awareness Month and 480,000 working-age Washingtonians are living with disabilities, some of them visible, like blindness, deafness, or injuries that affect mobility, others invisible, like learning disabilities or autism.

42% of working-age people with disabilities in Washington have jobs, compared to nearly 80% of working-age residents without disabilities.

That's a more than 37% gap that my guests today are working hard to close.

Here to help us dig into this and other challenges around disability rights are Chris Brandt, CEO at AtWork!, and Steve Nelson, Senior Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Specialist at Alaska Airlines.

Welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

So let's dig right in.

Chris, as I mentioned, there's a 37.4, I believe, percent disability employment gap in Washington State.

That's pretty big.

Can we close it?

What are we doing to close that gap?

- I think we can close it.

Where it's even larger is for people with significant disabilities, like intellectual and developmental disabilities, where actually 80% of people who want to work are not working.

And it's really important to close it because not only is it an opportunity for a person with disabilities to have a full and meaningful life and contribute and earn money and escape poverty, if you're born with a disability, your chances of living in poverty your entire life are really high, and we need to change that.

Employers are beginning to really understand how empowering it is to have a diverse workforce that includes people with disabilities because it represents the full breadth of society and people with disabilities, when they're employed, they really, they bring their talents, they bring their attributes to the workplace, and they transform employers in many ways and they're very positive to the bottom line.

Post-pandemic, we're looking at staffing shortages.

People are having trouble finding people to employ.

We have people with disabilities who are eager to get to work.

And so we can help with that future of what does employment look like and what is a full inclusive workforce?

- And Steve, Chris mentioned that people with disabilities being hired can transform employers.

Tell us more about that.

- So when you hire people with disabilities, you have to start looking at everything that you do.

You look at your job descriptions, you look at your interview process, onboarding.

It really makes you better as a whole when you think of what we call universal design.

What universal design means is you build something, whether it's a process, whether it's a space, that really is accessible to all people regardless of what accommodation somebody requests.

And really when you look at universal design and you build things that are open for everybody, that doesn't just benefit those with disabilities, it benefits everybody.

It makes you a better employer, a more accessible employer, more welcoming employer.

So it's really important to look at it.

- Hmm.

Can you name an example of maybe a place where universal design can have this impact, but might be overlooked by folks without disabilities?

- Well, I think some aspects of universal design are really simple, like curb cuts.

You know, can I get here?

Can I get in this building?

- [M nica] And define curb cuts.

- Curb cut is where there is no curb because it's a ramp and it's not like every sidewalk and every curb.

I may have to travel blocks to get to where I want to be.

Or even coming here to do this today, I had to ask a lot of questions about is there accessible parking?

Will I be able to get in?

Will I have to come through the back door, through the kitchen where people are making salad for the dinner and end up on the stage and everybody's going like, "Whoa, what happened here?"

So that's one part of universal design is that physical accessibility and when you have a curb cut, people who are elderly and using a cane, people who are young who have children, who have strollers, people who are dragging their suitcase, trying to get someplace in time, it makes it accessible for everyone when we look at universal design.

And in workplaces, it can be simple things like say you're sorting stuff and you're needing to put things in bins and it's written, the label.

In this bin goes this part and in this bin goes this part.

And you've gotta look at the box and you've gotta read it.

You have to be able to read English.

You have to be able to read well enough to see that.

Well, there's a colored tab on that box.

You use color.

You got the color box, you got the color on the tab, you match that.

Everybody can work at the same productivity and the same efficiency.

So having that universal design really impacts the bottom line of the employer because it helps everyone in the business be more efficient, be more productive.

And when people are seeing an inclusive workforce, they wanna work there 'cause they say, I'm gonna be welcomed there.

I'm gonna be recognized for what I can contribute.

And when I see a diverse workforce and that's reflective of my neighborhood, that's reflective of how I live, that may be reflective of my family because people with disabilities are the largest minority and they're the one that any of us could join at any time.

I didn't used to ride this.

- So Steve, more than 23,000 people work at Alaska Airlines.

What do you think is the role of the private sector compared with the government and public sector in hiring people with disabilities and accommodating different abilities?

- So I think when you look at companies that are, so there's some differences.

So with government, for example, government contractors or government entities, they have some slightly different requirements as far as recruiting and bringing in certain numbers of individuals with disabilities.

At Alaska Airlines, since we're a government contractor, we do fall under some of those guidelines.

We have an affirmative action plan that does have certain requirements.

I think for the private sector, when you're looking out at other organizations, it's really about understanding, you know, you focus on race, you focus on gender, LGBTQ.

People with disabilities are there.

They're part of it.

And what you do when you're recruiting for these individuals is you're making a more enriching work environment for everybody.

You're able to bring in individuals with very unique types of needs and backgrounds.

And really, it intersects into all of those other areas.

For us at Alaska, disability is kind of baked into our diversity, equity, inclusion strategy because you might look at the experience for a BIPOC employee and specifically the Black experience, which is very different, especially with recent events that have happened.

But now take this person who also has this disability and it's far more challenging for them in their day-to-day lives, getting into work and finding a job and progressing.

That's a big thing.

Look at somebody who gets hired, they get brought into a job.

We have the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires companies to look at individuals with disabilities and to make basic accommodations to help them enter into the workforce, but then what are you doing beyond that to help develop them?

You might bring a bunch of people into a frontline position and then you've done it, box checked, because beyond that, really, the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn't really do anything more.

- [M nica] Right.

- They're in the workplace, but... - So paint us the picture at Alaska Airlines.

- Yeah.

- Going beyond these basic requirements.

Walk us through one of them and tell us more about the employees who have disabilities.

- So it all starts with the accommodations team.

You come in, you need an accommodation.

Now, this isn't for everybody with disabilities.

It's a spectrum and some people might need some sort of accommodation, something more to get into the workplace, and others may not.

But for those individuals who do, it really starts with the accommodations process.

How are we looking at this person as an individual person?

We're not just looking at them as somebody with a disability.

They're not just this disabled person.

Oh, well, you're deaf.

So traditionally all of our deaf people have worked here.

Don't look at that.

Look at what abilities does this individual have, so where can they thrive?

Put them in that position.

Then when they're there, it's important to continue to advocate for them, to help get them into those positions where they can have, for instance, we have our Leadership Academy we just launched, which allows people to go through and to learn skills like communications and ethical leadership and things like that.

Put them through these programs so that they continue to build their skills despite what outside education they may have had so that they are now prepared to move into those management positions, director positions, and hopefully even our executive leadership positions.

- Do you happen to know how much of your workforce is in management position?

And is a person with disabilities or how, yeah, how does that work?

- So I don't have specific numbers for where they are as far as leadership is concerned right now.

I will say we're still fairly new in our process.

This Leadership Academy process is brand new as of maybe three weeks.

We do have about a 7% disability employment rate right now across the board for our employees and we keep in mind that those are those employees who have self-identified.

There are many people with disabilities who still don't feel safe to self-identify.

And that's part of what we've been working on is building a culture that shows that you are welcomed, you're appreciated, you're protected, you're safe, and you can definitely self-ID.

It's all confidential, but it's a way that now we know where we need to put those resources.

- Right.

So 7%, I mean, as far as other employers around Washington State, what kinds of employment rates do you see and where are they changing?

- I think that that depends on the business.

And when you're looking at people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, which is our area of focus at AtWork!, you're seeing very few people that are employed.

That percentage is really low.

There may be one or two people within a business that have intellectual and developmental disabilities.

And often the career path is a little different for them because what works well for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is something that's called customized employment.

And so, and it works for everyone because we all want to have jobs where we're really utilizing the talents we have and where our employer is really recognizing those talents and then seeing where they fit into the company and how that person can contribute and make a significant difference so that it's not like tokenism or charity jobs.

People with Down syndrome, people with other kinds of intellectual and developmental disabilities have often been seen that they can't work and if they do work, then they need to go to a place like a sheltered workshop where you're working side-by-side with many people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and even earning subminimum wage.

Now, especially here in Washington, because we're the best state in the nation for how we do competitive integrated employment and customized employment, the majority of people that are being supported in employment here in Washington, 84% of them are in those kinds of integrated positions where they're actually earning the same wage as the person that they work side-by-side and where their unique talents are really being looked at for inclusion in the workforce and advancement, where the national average is only 22.

So that's a big, significant difference.

And customized employment works for all businesses because what it is is going in and looking at what talent can a person with disabilities bring to this business to get something done that at this point, may not being done because it's kind of low down or it's not being done enough, or it's not being done by someone who loves to do it.

And often we're able to show employer that that goes straight to your bottom line and you're bringing in customers who care that there are people with significant disabilities in the business that they frequent.

- So we've touched on universal design, customized employment.

You mentioned subminimum wage, and we'll get there, but before we do, you both just watched a conversation in our first segment about the elections.

How might the results of these midterms affect disability rights?

Or what would you want people to pay attention to or to know politically about this?

- Well, I usually try to push that when it comes to disability inclusion, it really needs to be a bipartisan effort.

When you look at the American with Disabilities Act, which passed in 1990, this was landmark law.

This was huge for individuals with disabilities.

And it was a bipartisan effort.

It was signed into law by a Republican president.

And so it's important that whoever it is you're supporting sees these issues as critical and that you push them.

If it's your candidate, write them, call them, make sure that this is top of mind.

American with Disabilities Act is wonderful, but it needs more teeth.

It was updated, what, 10 years ago, maybe a little more than that, and very small updates.

There's so much more that can be done with it.

Just recently, the Air Carrier Access Act, we're looking at updates to that.

There's been a passenger bill of rights released for airline passengers, which is huge, and there's probably more things coming in 2023 that we're all pretty much, we're watching, we're expecting.

Make sure that this is top of mind because disability, it doesn't care if you're a Republican, if you're a Democrat.

It can happen anytime.

Tomorrow, you could wake up and you're somebody now with an extreme disability who would wish that there's somebody out there fighting for you.

- Well, and people with disabilities vote and people with disabilities are both Republicans and Democrats.

And disability rights and disability inclusion is a bipartisan issue because it resonates with issues that are important to Democrats and it resonates with issues that are important to Republicans because it makes the economy more efficient.

It makes bottom lines grow.

It actually, in my opinion, helps to keep things like inflation down, because when everyone is working and everyone is engaged, just the whole economic machine of our society works better.

And when we're including everyone, we then create the kind of society that I wanna live in and I think Republicans and Democrats both want to live in where everyone's included, where we're not wasting money on things that don't make sense, where we're honoring the identities and contributions of everyone, and that I think is both Republican and Democrat.

There may be different things at the heart of it for each of those groups, but what happens when people with disabilities are included and employed resonates with both of their issues.

And any major legislation that's passed has really been a bipartisan effort.

- So you mentioned subminimum wage.

I don't think a lot of people necessarily know about them.

So what are subminimum wages?

Who was getting them still and how do they impact the disabled community?

- Well, it's a law from 1938.

- [Steve] It's an old law.

- It's an old law and it's an archaic and discriminatory law that's part of the Fair Labor Standard Act.

It's called 14(c) and it gives people who employ people with disabilities, they can legally pay people less than what they pay anyone else.

- Wow.

- Today, there's about 44,000 people in the United States still left being paid less than the minimum wage because that is how their worth or their productivity is being valued or assessed.

And it's legal to do that.

There's 14 states that have ended subminimum wages.

- [M nica] Including yours.

- Including even one of 'em just a couple years ago.

Our ending of it is just being implemented.

I was honored to be appointed by President Biden to the AbilityOne Commission.

AbilityOne oversees a very large federal contracting program where you're required to employ people with disabilities to get those contracts.

And we just ended subminimum wages in those contracts on October 19th.

- That's nationwide.

- Of this year.

So we're saying you cannot pay subminimum wages anymore if you're gonna get one of those federal contracts.

And there's also legislation, the Transformation to Competitive Employment Act, that is looking at ending subminimum wages nationwide and it will provide resources to help organizations like AtWork!, who ended paying subminimum wages in 2015, to be able to do that and figure out how to move people into competitive integrated employment in the community, leaving no one behind.

And that's a bipartisan bill.

The sponsor is Bobby Scott, who's a Democrat, and the first Republican to sign on it is our own representative, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and I think there's five representatives from Washington State.

Another Republican has also signed on to that.

- What's in the way?

In states that have not already passed this, what is in the way?

- So, as Chris said, only 14 states have actually overturned this.

I believe from the last count I saw, there's five states that are considering it.

So really, you're thinking 30, 31 states haven't even thought about it.

And I'd say, I mean, it comes down to money.

In my opinion, it's really a money, we can get away with it.

We can save a lot of money.

And really, the sad truth is that when it comes to people with disabilities, it is often overlooked.

Our society is an ableist society.

It's been built for those people who don't have disabilities.

So those people in power, those people who make decisions, they don't see it.

It's not something that matters.

So it's we can save a lot of money doing this, we're gonna do it.

And a lot of those individuals who are getting paid this subminimum wage, they're in that very extreme minority and they're not in the position where they feel they can step up and say something and fight it and advocate.

What do you think?

- And my answer is similar.

There are large businesses that use the labor of people with disabilities to earn larger profits and they pay someone 53 cents an hour and their supervisor earns $25 an hour and the CEO of the organization earns $300,000.

And the people actually doing the work are not being paid fairly.

And they think people with intellectual and developmental disabilities don't understand the value of money, that they're lucky just to have any job.

If you think that that's the only option to you and you've never been given the opportunity to try or discover anything, I'm sure your first job wasn't a reporter.

You discovered somehow that that's what you wanted to be.

And it's same for people with disabilities.

If this is only the thing you know and the only thing that lets you get out of the house, how do you know if you like peas and beans if the only thing you've ever been served is corn?

And so part of what that Transformation to Competitive Employment will do is give people with disabilities the opportunity to get out and actually discover who they are and what they can contribute.

- More than one million people with disabilities lost work nationwide during the pandemic.

How did the last two years impact your advocacy for people with disabilities?

- We in Washington State, because we're fairly progressive in this, were able to continue to advocate for moving forward.

We've passed some good legislation in our state that's gonna give people with disabilities more services and many people with disabilities were the essential workers.

They're the people that you saw bagging your groceries in the store.

They're the people that are out doing cleaning jobs, those kinds of things.

And so some people with disabilities kept their jobs.

And so organizations like AtWork!, our job coaches continued to work and go out and brave the pandemic, as did people with disabilities so that they could continue to keep their jobs.

Some were furloughed, like folks that worked maybe at Salesforce or Microsoft were furloughed along with other employees and continued to be paid and then were brought back on board.

But in our state, we were very innovative in how we supported organizations like AtWork!

that provide customized and competitive employment by giving us some resources that we could train our staff and still stay whole during the pandemic.

So we were actually able to stay stable and strong where many nonprofits doing similar work to AtWork!

or other nonprofit work didn't survive the pandemic.

- Now, many people with disabilities, as you know, struggle against a social stigma placed on their way of speaking, moving, or just being.

For the people not living with disabilities in our audience, what are some concrete ways that we can be more aware of that stigma and what can we do to reduce it, and more broadly, help our neighbors with disabilities?

- I think that one of the ways that we can all do that is recognizing that normal is a really broad spectrum and that what everyone brings to the table is within that spectrum of what is normal or what is the human experience.

And think about how you are interacting with people with disabilities, how you're talking to them.

Don't be afraid.

People with disabilities are more like us than they are different.

And it may take you a minute to understand how someone's communicating with you, but don't assume people need help.

Don't assume that you'll do the wrong thing.

Just interact as if they were anyone else.

- Steve, what would you add?

- I would really just co-sign everything that Chris said.

Remember that individuals with disabilities, even though it is important to think of things like universal design and for making things just naturally accessible so that everyone doesn't have to request accommodation, they don't have to be the, quote, special person.

Not everybody needs your assistance.

Not everybody is a fragile lamb.

And really think twice next time you see that viral video of the person with autism who plays the piano and you wanna share how brave they are.

It's like, they're playing the piano.

They're a normal person, quote, normal, the spectrum.

Think twice.

That's how you can be a good ally.

- Well, with that, thank you both so much for illuminating these issues for us tonight.

Really appreciate it.

And with that, we're ready to close another edition of "Civic Cocktail."

Thanks to all of you watching at home and here live in our studio.

"Civic Cocktail" will return on November 9th.

That's right after the midterm election.

We'll sit down with political consultants from both sides of the aisle to talk about how Democrats and Republicans played the political game and what they plan to do next.

We'll also talk with King County Council member Girmay Zahilay, a compelling young leader who's awesome, who will chat with us about pulling political levers to try and make change.

You can find out more at crosscut.com/events.

Thanks, everyone, and goodnight.

(audience applauds) (upbeat music)